Several people were still in police custody Thursday after the probably criminal fire, now under control, having ravaged 1,200 hectares in Ardèche, while in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence a fire outbreak led to the preventive evacuation of a camping. The great drought and the wind have favored the outbreak of fire in several departments in recent days, some criminals, others accidental.
In the Ardèche, the fire was “fixed this (Thursday) morning”, that is to say under control but not yet extinguished, Jean-Philippe Ladet, commander of the SDIS relief operations, told the press. Rescuers are still dealing with “many fumaroles” and are “creating tracks” to drown the fire on the ground, he said. The authorities evoke an arsonist act: after a tweet from the prefecture to this effect on Wednesday, the Privas prosecution confirmed Thursday morning that “several police custody” were in progress. According to France 3 Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the Aubenas gendarmerie arrested a suspect near a start of fire, with, in his vehicle, equipment that could “incriminate him”.
The north wind “with gusts exceeding 70 km / h” and “drought for several months” fed the extent of the fire, especially since several fire starts took place “simultaneously” according to M Ladet, including five in the municipality of Lussas alone, near Aubenas, and three others within a radius of 10 km.
Up to 600 men have been mobilized, 350 will still be for the day. But “we will stay for many days to make sure that there is no more recovery,” said the relief manager.
“We had a narrow escape”
“I am relieved, we say to ourselves that we had a narrow escape, and at the same time a little worried” because of the south wind which could resume, reacted for her part the mayor of Lussas, Claude Moncomble, who n has “never known such a huge fire”. “I am completely shocked, even traumatized. There was fire in the south, fire in the north …”, also testified Michel, retired in Darbres, a neighboring town. “We did not stop …” from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., still blew Wednesday evening Romain Charbonnier, 22, 1st class volunteer firefighter, not far from a burning tree in front of a charred landscape where the smell of burning seizes nostrils.
Water bombers (five Canadairs and a Dash aircraft), as well as a hundred intervention vehicles and a civil security helicopter were mobilized for this fire, which required the preventive evacuation of 350 people from the small tourist town of Vogüé and surrounding campsites.
In the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, some 400 people were preventively evacuated on Wednesday evening from a campsite in Castellane in the face of a fire which has already covered 300 hectares in the town of Rougon, a village perched on the heights of the Regional Natural Park of the Verdon. But the fire “has been slowed down and is progressing little,” the prefecture said Thursday and “the site was not threatened by the flames,” officials told AFP.
Some 200 firefighters nevertheless remain mobilized in an area that is difficult to access by land means. A possible return of people to their campsite will be decided “in the second part of the day”, specified the prefecture.